Folk in #philosophy a question for yinz. I always think of the canon as stuff there’s a normative expectation that someone finishing an undergrad degree (or at about that level) be familiar with. So it’s primarily a teaching category. Does this accord with your sense of the term?
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It seems plausible that there is a canonical list of medieval philosophers, a canonical list of Islamic philosophers, of pragmatist philosophers, or German idealists, of existentialists, etc., etc. I don't think there is any expectation of familiarity with *those* canons.
Ah so when people say <field specific canon> I take this to be normative expectations about what an undergrad course on that field should familiarise people with, what constitutes passable albeit minimal acquaintance.
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Yeah, that seems plausible. Do you think there is something like a canon of the canons? I.e. what an undergraduate philosophy education minimally covers? Are there figures outside the canonical canons that are more important than some less important figures in the can-canons?
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Oh snap I had never thought of that, but I suppose there's a kind of natural hierarchy here of what canons we normatively expect people to be familiar with! In many Anglo-American schools I think it's The Ancient Greek Canon, the Early Modern Canon, & the Classic Analytics Canon.
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